WordPress fix Search on Menus Page Bad Results

Guest

Hi! I’m setting up menus on a big site (several hundred pages). When I try to search for pages to add them to the menu, I’m getting weird results—basically anything *but* the page I’m actually searching for. Example:

Screenshot shows results when searching for the word “Adviser”. I have numerous pages with that word in the title, such as “Advisers,” “Adviser Resource Center,” etc. None of them come back in the search, while pages <i>without</i> the search term do.

Potential factors:

There are many pages that share the same title. I would expect that to give me more relevant results rather than fewer, but maybe they’re canceling each other out or something?

Page hierarchy is pretty complex—five or six levels deep in some places. Could it be taking the titles/slugs of parent & child pages into account?

I’ve tried deactivating all plugins and switching to a stock theme (Twenty Seventeen) to no avail. Seems to be either an issue with my site’s data/environment, or with WordPress itself.